Welcome to Mailbox Monday, created by Marcia of To Be Continued, a place where readers share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week.
After several years of being on tour with different blogs as the monthly host, the Mailbox Monday Blog is now the permanent home for the meme.
I only received one book last week but it’s one I’m looking forward to reading. I’ve read several of Koontz’s early novels and Lightening is one of my all-time favorites, but I haven’t read one of his books in a few years.
No pretty outdoor photo for me this week. We are buried under a foot of snow! What a change from the last two weeks and our spring-like temperatures.
Print Books
Ashley Bell by Dean Koontz from Bantam.
Featuring the most exhilarating heroine in memory and a sophisticated, endlessly ingenious, brilliantly paced narrative through dark territory and deep mystery, this is a new milestone in literary suspense and a major new breakout book from the long acclaimed master.
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Still time to enter the giveaway for . . .
Crow Made a Friend by Margaret Peot
Crow Made a Friend is part of Holiday House’s innovative and award-winning I LIKE TO READ® books, which are just right for emergent readers. These picture books by renowned and beloved artists have been evaluated and assigned Guided Reading Levels B through G based on the Fountas and Pinnell system and feature short texts familiar vocabulary repetition to reinforce learning illustrations that are designed to be a part of the learning experience.
Enter on or before November 28th. US addresses only.
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© 2015 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
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Thank you to everyone that stopped by to enter the giveaway. The winner was selected using random.org and has been notified by email.
An Old-Fashioned Christmas
by Ellen Stimson
Winner: Serena
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© 2015 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
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What is Project FeederWatch?
“Project FeederWatch is a winter-long survey of birds that visit feeders at backyards, nature centers, community areas, and other locales in North America. FeederWatchers periodically count the birds they see at their feeders from November through early April and send their counts to Project FeederWatch. FeederWatch data help scientists track broad scale movements of winter bird populations and long-term trends in bird distribution and abundance.”
My yard this morning
This is not a black and white photo. The sun is hidden behind many, many layers of clouds and even Photoshop couldn’t help this picture!
It figures Chicago would have a blizzard on my count day. So, where are the birds? Most of them are hiding in the snow-covered Spirea shrub. There are about 20 House Sparrows, a few Juncos, some finches, and a Cardinal out there, although you probably can’t see them. What you can see is a foot of snow that I am going to have to shovel — or maybe wait for it to melt; warmer weather is returning on Wednesday.
My seventh year participating in Feederwatch
The 2015-2016 FeederWatch count began last week and continues until spring. I’ve been participating for seven years now and am still amazed at the variety of birds that visit my feeders. I count for an hour or two on the weekends, but there is no minimum time requirement to participate — it can be as little as 15 minutes or as long as all day. It’s not too late to join. Participants can start at any time during the program.
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Almost wordless: Jentrie loves coffee. Coffee is not good for birds, so he is not allowed to drink it — but he tries anyway. Jentrie is a 22 year old Senegal that I adopted last year.
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More Wordless Wednesday. © 2015 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
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About the Book
Genre: Children – Early readers
Publisher: Holiday House | Sept 2015
Format: Hardcover | 24 pages
Crow Made a Friend is part of Holiday House’s innovative and award-winning I LIKE TO READ® books, which are just right for emergent readers. These picture books by renowned and beloved artists have been evaluated and assigned Guided Reading Levels B through G based on the Fountas and Pinnell system and feature short texts familiar vocabulary repetition to reinforce learning illustrations that are designed to be a part of the learning experience.
My Thoughts
Poor crow is all alone. He doesn’t have any family or friends. But like all crows, he is very clever, and using sticks and leaves he creates a friend. But that friend blows away with the wind. He then makes a friend out of snow. But the sunshine melts the snow and that friend is gone too. Eventually crow finds a mate and together they create a family. Crow is not alone anymore.
Crow Made a Friend is a picture book designed for very early readers. Pages are brightly illustrated in watercolor with short, simple sentences that young children can easily follow. Crow himself is an iridescent rainbow of colors rather than the usual solid black, giving him a cheerful, inviting look. Drawings of trees, leaves, a nest, and birds are easy for young children to relate to and are words they can associate and remember. A downloadable activity sheet with cutouts is available so children can make their own crow friend, adding some fun to the reading experience.
About the Author
Margaret is an artist, writer and costume painter. Margaret has two new books out in 2015, Stencil Craft (F&W) and an early reader picture book, Crow Made a Friend (Holiday House). Margaret’s book Inkblot: Drip, Splat and Squish Your Way to Creativity (Boyds Mills 2011) was awarded a Eureka! Silver Medal for non-fiction children’s books. She is also the author of The Successful Artist’s Career Guide (F&W 2012), Alternative Art Journals (F&W 2012), and Make Your Mark (Chronicle Books, 2004), voted one of Library Journal’s best how-to books of 2004.
An avid believer that art making can be for everyone, Margaret has presented art workshops with cancer survivors, elders, children, parent and teen groups, writers, nurses and caregivers, at The Creative Center at University Settlement’s Creative Aging conferences, and their Artist-in-Residence Training program, with EngAGE Utah, at Gilda’s Club, The Huntsman Cancer Institute, Operation Exodus in NYC, and at Miami University’s Scripps center with Dr. Like Lokon, and Opening Minds Through Art.
Connect with Margaret:
Goodreads | Author’s Webpage | Facebook | Twitter
Giveaway – US and Canada
Thanks to the publisher, I have one copy of Crow Made a Friend to give away to a reader with a US mailing address. To enter, fill out the form below on or before November 25th. I will draw a random winner who will be notified by email and have 48 hours to respond.
[Giveaway has ended]
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For a list of tour stops click HERE.
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Source: Review copy from TLC Book Tours
© 2015 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Advertisements appearing on this site are placed by WordPress and are not endorsed or approved by me.
Welcome to Mailbox Monday, created by Marcia of To Be Continued, a place where readers share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week.
After several years of being on tour with different blogs as the monthly host, the Mailbox Monday Blog is now the permanent home for the meme.
Another busy week for me. And if I didn’t already have enough to do, I’m now working part-time two days a week. Reading has been slow, but thank goodness for audio books. Here’s what arrived last week . . .
Print Books
The Things We Keep by Sally Hepworth from St. Martin’s Press.
Anna Forster, in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease at only thirty-eight years old, knows that her family is doing what they believe to be best when they take her to Rosalind House, an assisted living facility. She also knows there’s just one another resident her age, Luke. What she does not expect is the love that blossoms between her and Luke even as she resists her new life at Rosalind House.
Audio Downloads
From Penguin Random House Audio
Saturn Run by John Sandford and Ctein.
The year is 2066. A Caltech intern inadvertently notices an anomaly from a space telescope—something is approaching Saturn, and decelerating. Space objects don’t decelerate. Spaceships do.
Slade House by David Mitchell.
From “one of the most electric writers alive” (The Boston Globe) comes a taut, intricately woven, spine-chilling, reality-warping novel. Set across five decades, beginning in 1979 and coming to its astonishing conclusion on October 31, 2015, Slade House invites readers to experience yet again David Mitchell’s extraordinary imagination.
The Grownup by Gillian Flynn.
A canny young woman is struggling to survive by perpetrating various levels of mostly harmless fraud.
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Still time to enter the giveaway for . . .
An Old-Fashioned Christmas by Ellen Stimson
With its trademark snow, piney forests, sleigh rides and wood smoke curling out of village chimneys, New England was practically invented for the Christmas postcard. It’s got your Christmas goose and the maple syrup with which to glaze it. It’s most of the reason author Ellen Stimson made Vermont her home. Here she shares recipes that have been in her family for generations, mixes up a cocktail or two, and invites readers to make their own traditions.
Enter on or before November 21st. US/Canada addresses only.
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© 2015 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
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Sweet Traditions for Hearth and Home
About the Book
Genre: Cooking / Memoir
Publisher: Countryman Press | Nov 2015
Format: Hardcover | 288 pages
Rating: 5 of 5
With its trademark snow, piney forests, sleigh rides and wood smoke curling out of village chimneys, New England was practically invented for the Christmas postcard. It’s got your Christmas goose and the maple syrup with which to glaze it. It’s most of the reason author Ellen Stimson made Vermont her home. Here she shares recipes that have been in her family for generations, mixes up a cocktail or two, and invites readers to make their own traditions.
Part memoir, part cookbook, An Old-Fashioned Christmas is filled with food, fun, and holiday memories from the Stimson family. It’s all tied together with gorgeous photos not only of the food, but also the holiday decorations and beautiful Vermont scenery.
The author has included dozens of her own family recipes: Some simple and some a little more challenging (for me anyway) and many accompanied by color photos of the final dish. Recipes for Loaded Mashed Potatoes, Deviled Eggs, and Apricot Horns are calling out to me to be added to the Thanksgiving Day menu. A few dishes I am looking forward to trying are Decadent Mac ‘n’ Cheese, Root Beer Pulled Pork, and Buttermilk Fried Chicken. There is much comfort food here, not only for the holidays, but throughout the cold northern winter.
This is much more than just a recipe book. It’s about family and traditions – celebrating old ones and making new ones. I especially enjoyed the seeing the photos of the family’s Christmas ornaments featured in each chapter and reading the stories behind them.
This is a book to treasure and one that I will be referring back to again and again.
About the Author
Ellen Stimson is a bread-and-butter homecook…possibly more butter than bread. Her table is usually overflowing with friends, family, and folks who have come just to listen to her stories. Some of those tales made it into her bestselling memoir, Mud Season. She cooks and writes from a farmhouse in Vermont.
For More Info:
Goodreads | Author’s Webpage | Facebook | Twitter
Giveaway – US and Canada
Thanks to the publisher, I have one copy of An Old Fashioned Christmas to give away to a reader with a mailing address in the US or Canada. To enter, fill out the form below on or before November 21st. I will draw a random winner who will be notified by email.
For a bonus entry, leave a comment telling me about a favorite holiday recipe or tradition.
[Giveaway has ended]
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For a list of tour stops click HERE.
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Source: Review copy from TLC Book Tours
© 2015 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Advertisements appearing on this site are placed by WordPress and are not endorsed or approved by me.
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